An investigation of alcohol consumption in North Queensland: an application of the prototype willingness model

Background/Aims: The prototype willingness (PW) model suggests that there are two separate antecedents to behaviour: intention and willingness. Whereas intention is suggested to be reasoned and deliberative, willingness is more automatic and reactive. The aim of this study was to assess alcohol consumption in an Australian sample as well as the antecedents to drinking behaviour on both weekdays and weekend days. Methods: The sample for this study was taken from a larger cross-cultural study (n=371); however only those who identified as Australian were included in the current analysis. From the original sample, 177 participants identified as Australian (115 females and 62 males). Participants completed a questionnaire assessing demographic variables, alcohol consumption and variables on the PW model. Results: Participants reported consuming more alcohol during weekend drinking sessions (M = 5.60, SD = 4.80) than weekday drinking sessions (M = 1.46, SD = 2.49). The model accounted for 15.0% of the variance in the quantity of alcohol consumed in a typical weekday drinking session and 41.5% of the variance in a typical weekend drinking session. Willingness to drink significantly predicted alcohol consumption during weekday drinking sessions. Both willingness and intention to drink, and demographic variables significantly predicted alcohol consumption during weekend drinking sessions. Conclusion: The antecedents of the PW model differentially predicted alcohol consumption during a typical weekday and weekend drinking session

Source to sink zircon grain shape: Constraints on selective preservation and significance for Western Australian Proterozoic basin provenance

The effect of selective preservation during transportation of zircon grains on the detrital age spectrum is difficult to quantify and could potentially lead to systematic bias in provenance analysis. Here we investigate whether the shape of detrital zircon grains holds provenance information and if the grain shape can assist in understanding preservation. We applied multiple linear regression analysis to identify significant shape properties in detrital zircons from Proterozoic metasediments of the Capricorn and Amadeus basins and their Archean and Proterozoic sources in the Yilgarn Craton and the Musgrave Province in Western Australia. Digital images and isotopic data from 819 SIMS U-Pb dated zircons were examined for correlation between grain shape, age, U and Th content. Out of twelve shape descriptors measured, Minor Axis, the width of zircon grains perpendicular to the crystallographic c-axis, consistently shows the most significant correlation with isotopic age. In the studied population Archean grains are narrower than Proterozoic grains: the probability that grains wider than 75 µm are Archean is less than 30%.Calculations of the proportions of source material in sedimentary rocks relative to the proportions of source material in the overall catchment area (erosion parameter '. K' calculated based on age spectra) produced values typical for mature river systems, with K = 6 for the Yilgarn-Capricorn and K = 5.5 for the Musgrave-Amadeus source-sink system. For the Yilgarn-Capricorn system, we also calculated '. K' based on Minor Axis, to determine whether grain width can be linked to age populations. Results of the shape-based K of 5.3 suggest a similarity between age-based and shape-based '. K' values, demonstrating that zircon grain width may be a useful discriminator of provenance. Contrary to commonly applied qualitative shape classifications, we found no consistent correlations between shape descriptors of magmatic zircons and the composition of their host rock. While metamict zircons were preferentially removed during transport, the similarities in grain shape and age distribution of magmatic and detrital populations suggest that hydraulic sorting did not have a significant effect. We conclude that transport of zircon grains from magmatic source to sedimentary sink affects their width less than their length

Lower-Level Stimulus Features Strongly Influence Responses in the Fusiform Face Area

An intriguing region of human visual cortex (the fusiform face area; FFA) responds selectively to faces as a general higher-order stimulus category. However, the potential role of lower-order stimulus properties in FFA remains incompletely understood. To clarify those lower-level influences, we measured FFA responses to independent variation in 4 lower-level stimulus dimensions using standardized face stimuli and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). These dimensions were size, position, contrast, and rotation in depth (viewpoint). We found that FFA responses were strongly influenced by variations in each of these image dimensions; that is, FFA responses were not “invariant” to any of them. Moreover, all FFA response functions were highly correlated with V1 responses (r = 0.95–0.99). As in V1, FFA responses could be accurately modeled as a combination of responses to 1) local contrast plus 2) the cortical magnification factor. In some measurements (e.g., face size or a combinations of multiple cues), the lower-level variations dominated the range of FFA responses. Manipulation of lower-level stimulus parameters could even change the category preference of FFA from “face selective” to “object selective.” Altogether, these results emphasize that a significant portion of the FFA response reflects lower-level visual responses

Writing in Britain and Ireland, c. 400 to c. 800

No abstract available

How biological attention mechanisms improve task performance in a large-scale visual system model

How does attentional modulation of neural activity enhance performance? Here we use a deep convolutional neural network as a large-scale model of the visual system to address this question. We model the feature similarity gain model of attention, in which attentional modulation is applied according to neural stimulus tuning. Using a variety of visual tasks, we show that neural modulations of the kind and magnitude observed experimentally lead to performance changes of the kind and magnitude observed experimentally. We find that, at earlier layers, attention applied according to tuning does not successfully propagate through the network, and has a weaker impact on performance than attention applied according to values computed for optimally modulating higher areas. This raises the question of whether biological attention might be applied at least in part to optimize function rather than strictly according to tuning. We suggest a simple experiment to distinguish these alternatives

Creating and curating an archive: Bury St Edmunds and its Anglo-Saxon past

This contribution explores the mechanisms by which the Benedictine foundation of Bury St Edmunds sought to legitimise and preserve their spurious pre-Conquest privileges and holdings throughout the Middle Ages. The archive is extraordinary in terms of the large number of surviving registers and cartularies which contain copies of Anglo-Saxon charters, many of which are wholly or partly in Old English. The essay charts the changing use to which these ancient documents were put in response to threats to the foundation's continued enjoyment of its liberties. The focus throughout the essay is to demonstrate how pragmatic considerations at every stage affects the development of the archive and the ways in which these linguistically challenging texts were presented, re-presented, and represented during the Abbey’s history

The efficacy of the PW model to predict drinking behaviour cross-culturally

Background: The prototype willingness (PW) model suggests that there are two separate antecedents to behaviour: intention and willingness. Intention is suggested to be deliberative, whereas willingness is thought to be more impulsive. The current study used a cross-cultural sample in order to examine the differential predictive power of the PW model for drinking behaviour. \ud \ud Methods: A sample of 295 individuals from Australia (n=177) and Singapore (n=118) completed a questionnaire measuring alcohol consumption and variables of the PW model. Findings: Both willingness and intention to drink significantly predicted frequency of alcohol consumption for Australian's. In Singaporean's however, behavioural willingness was the sole predictor of alcohol consumption. Furthermore, findings indicate that the PW model differentially predicts alcohol consumption in ethnic subsets of the Singaporean sample. Discussion: The antecedents of the PW model differentially predict alcohol consumption in culturally diverse samples. Implications for cross-cultural health behaviour modelling and health interventions aimed to reduce drinking across cultures are discussed